This work consists of a research on written culture, made within the frame of the “Interrogatorio” (Questioning) that the “Real Audiencia de Extremadura” (Royal Extremadura Court) conducted after its establishment in the region in 1790. The answers provided in this “Interrogatorio” show information about a great diversity of topics, and some among them concern the processes of reading and writing, the written documents, and the people and institutions closely related to them.
Consequently, our main goal has been analyzing this documentation using the methodology of documentary analysis, with the aid of a historic information system specifically developed for this task, in order to obtain the information required to carry out a historical study of the written culture in Extremadura at the end of the XVIII century.
The Extremadura province, that was divided in nine “partidos” (counties) at this time, was a sparsely populated territory, impoverished and isolated, to which the advances of the age of enlightenment typical of this century had barely arrived.
Meanwhile, in other areas of the nation ideas were renovated and libraries, vocational schools and printing offices were open, the view in the Extremadura region was a continuation of the cultural trajectory followed so far.
Analyzing the different aspects related to written culture (archives, scriveners, teaching, libraries, mail, by-laws…) from a global point of view as well as in each “partido”, we can produce a global image of its situation in the Extremadura of the final period of the Modern Age (as far as the information compiled in the “Interrogatorio” allows).